Desert Southwest gardening can be sustainable, smart and spectacular.

Tag Archives: drip irrigation

In several posts, I’ve reiterated how important it is to water slowly and deeply, especially for vegetables and xeric plants. Just last week, I touted the benefits of drip irrigation as a way to accomplish deep watering and ensure that you water under plants, not over them.

I babbled so much about drip irrigation that the folks at Garden Drip System by Thombo offered to send me a free Garden Drip hose (tape) to test. The drip hose differs from typical soaker hoses in its material. Instead of the heavier, rubber-like round tubing, the drip hose comes as flat plastic tape. In fact, the company mailed it to me in a small padded envelope, not a box.

The Garden Drip Hose rolls up to a compact size, so it’s small and light for shipping, storing and lugging around.

Different from soaker hoses

The drip tape material is lightweight and compact. That helped when I lugged it back and forth to try it in a few places. It didn’t take long for the rolls from packaging to completely flatten (as opposed to a regular hose I purchased recently, which keeps coiling around my leg, kinking and knocking into my delicate bean plants!)

Anyway, back to the Garden Drip. The tape is designed so that a tiny hole emits drips of water about every foot. That’s another way in which it differs from a soaker hose, which basically is scored all the way down its length. Having said that, you can control where the emitters go to some extent, but you still will get some drip between plants if you have wells rather than rows. The tape is designed to only curve slightly, not make intricate curves and 90-degree turns around a garden. The in-between drips were not a big deal, though, because the soaking is so slow and steady that I had no pooled water anywhere.

Tiny holes emit drips of water from the striped top of the tape, making installation super easy and the flow nice and slow.

Little pressure needed

I laid out the drip tape to water some vegetables and roses near my house and set my phone timer for four hours. It was nice to work while I watered. The pressure was terrific once I easily spotted and flattened any slight twists in the hose. Once the tape is in place, it’s unobtrusive. The polyethylene tape should stand up to beating sun better than traditional soaker hoses. I imagine you could easily place a few stakes along its path to keep it secure, but it would be best to do so while it’s running. That’s because the tape looks flat when it arrives and you first lay it out, but the shape rounded out as soon as I added water to the tape, filling it all the way to the end of the 50 feet.

The thin strip of tape fit nicely under the zucchini plant and was flexible enough to curve slightly with the beds.

Speaking of pressure, I wanted to test the hose with my rain barrel, but the only barrel I have with a good hose connection is too far from my garden, so it’s unfair to readers and Garden Drip to say how it works with a 50-foot hose between the barrel and the 50-foot drip tape, not to mention a fairly inexpensive barrel and a barely downhill slope. I would suggest the shortest possible length if you want to try it with a barrel, simply because you don’t have any mechanical pressure like you will from a faucet.

I hooked the tape up to my hose for the best possible pressure in a location too far from barrels with faucets. They were simple to connect.

The Garden Drip comes in lengths of 25, 50, 75 and 100 feet. And if you watch the company’s videos, you can get fancy with shortening, repairing and customizing the hose.

Bottom line: This is the perfect way to water rows of home garden and small farm crops. It is slow and steady as promised, lightweight and effective at drip irrigation and saving water. It won’t work as well as a custom drip system for a xeric garden with plants scattered around, but if you’ve got some fairly straight rows or beds to water, this is the way to go! You can irrigate less often and more efficiently, saving water and helping your plants’ roots become more healthy.